SpacePirate, on Feb 9 2005, 08:35 PM, said:
While we're at it, why not make use of the DS's 3D capabilities as well? 
Seriously, though, if there were even a chance of this game being made, it would still need a good control scheme. Any ideas on how they should be set up? The general consensus regarding all the other consoles has been that there just aren't enough buttons. However, a touch screen could certainly rectify that.
~ SP
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This was sufficiently interesting for me to look into, and I have to say that layout, graphics, controls, ect are the absolute least of the obstacles you'd face making this. You have to get a dev kit first. To do that legally, you have to get a dev liscense. And that has to be gotten through corporate channels. I don't know the internals of Ambrosia, but that might be beyond them.
Also, I found an emulator for NDS (for windows, of course) and know what it does so far? It emulates GBA roms. That's about it.
Overlooking all that, here's what I've thought about:
Controls: Something similar to MP:Hunters. Multiple schemes, R & L handed.
Classic:
Doubt people will use this, too many things get put in touch screen.
Start: Pause & Menu
Select: Cycle Secondary
D-Pad: Acceleration & Turning
R: Primary
L: Secondary
A: Afterburn
B: (Contextual) Autopilot, Land, Board
X: Jump
Y: Target
Play Screen would be the top.
Classic Left (see above and reverse)
Touch to Move:
I like this one.
Acceleration and direction controlled by the stylus. This can work. it'd be like dragging your ship around by the nose with an infinitly elastic rubber band. Acceleration and turning would limit the ship's ability to follow. Something similar is done in IK character animation, so it's nothing new. I'd have to test it to see, but I think most manuevers would be possible, and ships would be able to orbit the stylus. Autopilot is pointless here, as that's what the stylus is.
Beyond this, button assignments are simpler. Oft used actions are placed near the holding hand (D-Pad for RH, buttons for LH), while little used actions are assigned to the opposite side, as they are harder to access on the fly. The consequence is that unassigned actions are incredibly difficult to get to. User binding for at least 1 button (A) is pretty much required here.
Weapons layout remains the same.
Right Handed:
D-Up: Afterburner
D-Left: Target
D-Right: Hyper
D-Down: Land/Board
A: User selected
B: Move Menu selection (upper screen)
X: Select selection
Y: Cycle Tabs
IMO, we still need more buttons, but it can be worked out. Also, voice recognition for some commands might be possible.
Now, for other things. The really neat idea is that the DS can access both the NDS slot and the GBA slot at the same time. This means that the plugin nature of EV can be maintained on the DS. Put the engine on the NDS card, and use the GBA slot for game data. If needed, you can use a larger capacity cart. Get a flash card, the usb link, and copy what amounts to a plugin folder onto the cart.
I would suggest a load process like this:
- engine
- minimal game data, maybe demo-ish, and some code to continue looking for cart data to load
- data on cart
- pilots on cart (maybe two or three saves depending on size, and provide a method for copying pilot data to another cart)
That's all I can think of now.
(edit)
NDS cart storage: 128mb
Nova PC: 1.6mb
Nova Data: ~170mb (I replaced Nova music.)
Total: 171.6mb (134% cart storage)
Of course, that's all PC sizes. A final product for DS would be optimized and compressed, and finally, the graphics and audio would be much smaller and compressed themselves.
using an engine cart and a data cart might not work, but pilots on a gba cart would be usefull.
(/edit)
This post has been edited by Artanis : 10 February 2005 - 10:51 PM
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